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There used to be a time when the weather people couldn't get the weather right if they looked out the window ahead of time. Meteorology has come so far along now that your weather forecaster can effortlessly nail what the weather will be like three days from now. Unfortunately, our expectations have risen far past that. No longer are we happy to know what it will be like three days from now. We want to know what it'll be like a week from now so that we can plan our weekend. With expectations like that, modern terminology can often seem inaccurate and clunky.

In fact, your weather forecaster can be so off-base for what is to happen a week from now, that he might as well flip a coin.

Now here's something worth noticing about what kind of things your weather forecaster is able to get right and what he gets wrong. They are often not very good at telling when the weather is going to turn bad. If there is a small rainstorm thunderstorm coming up 45 min. from now, they're not really going to be able to tell. Those things are small, fast and unpredictable. It can be hard to tell which way those clouds are going and it can be hard to tell if they'll actually produce rain.

Funny how Hulu will give you entertainment for your computer at a low price, but will charge extra if you want watch the same thing on your television. They'll call their television product Hulu Plus and charge you more for it. If you think that's a scam, there's a way you can use your laptop wireless connection to connect to your television wirelessly and watch away. You don't have to bother with any special adapters or cables. All you need to do is to use your laptop wireless connection. As Hulu streams to your laptop, your laptop uses the Wi-Fi connection to stream it directly to your TV. And the problem.

This isn't some kind of home hack either. There are lots of great big name companies that have products out there that do this out-of-the-box. Netgear has its Push2TV, and Imation has Link, for instance. Let's take a look to see which method can work best for you.

More or less, these products cost the same. Netgear's product is a little cheaper though – at about $100. So let's take a look at how works.

When the iPhone 4 “grip of death” problem struck, one wonders what everyone was so surprised at it. It's not like cell phone signals are reliable things. Come to think of it, you shouldn't really blame the iPhone 4 for the trouble it has staying in touch with the nearest tower. If the cell phone services providers were to beef up their coverage, there's no reason why holding your iPhone 4 a certain way would make it lose contact.

Problems with providers of cell phone services are more or less the same everywhere too. Typically, you don't have problems like this with providers of cell phone services in Europe or the Far East. But you get other kinds of problems. If you want to take your cell phone you use it to another country, you do want to make sure that there's an operator there who has an arrangement in place with your cell phone operator at home.

Funny how quickly the highest tech computer or smartphone, can instantly be struck down by something as low-tech as a dead battery. It doesn't matter how much you need to be on the phone in your line of work– no one wants to hear about how you were unavailable because your battery just ran out. And this isn't easy. Smartphone battery life as a subject never seems to be at the top of any manufacturer’s list of things to improve.

But this is not to be taken to mean that you have to take the kind of smartphone battery life you're handed, lying down. There are quite a few things you can do to make sure that your smart phone battery lasts.

They say that ever since the iPhone 4s came out, phone carriers have been finding the going particularly difficult keeping up with the kind of Internet surfing that these phone owners seem to love. There's something about the latest iphone that makes people use data up at a rate that's higher than on any other iPhone.

I work as a probation officer, and in my time, I have seen it all. I have conducted thousands of home visits, and while most of them don't turn up anything, occasionally, I come across someone who decides to be stupid. That is when my camera mobile phone comes in handy, and on one occasion, got me out of what could have been a potentially job-threatening situation.

I was out on a home visit, and I was going to the house of somebody that was a known drug offender. I normally bring my camera mobile phone on home visits, just in case, and when I got to the house, I could immediately sense that something was wrong. The probationer did not want to show me the entire house, and when I finally pushed the issue, he opened the door to what appeared to be the den, and I saw a bag of what appeared to be methamphetamine on a coffee table.

He tried to show me around the rest of the room and ignore the bag, but I was already focused in on it, and when he showed me a painting that he bought at a local auction, I took that opportunity to snap a picture of the bag of drugs with my camera mobile phone. It does not have a flash, so he did not know that I had done it, and when I left the house, I am sure that he thought he had pulled one over on me.

Funny how people talk about smartphones like they are a new concept. The BlackBerry has been around for at least 10 years now. Even so, perhaps it would be accurate to treat smartphones like a new concept because it was only in 2008 that the App Store actually took off. The idea that you could have an actual place to go to for programs to put on your phone like it was computer is a very recent concept. Still, app developers have pounced on the concept and really got it off the ground.

Apple's App Store has about a quarter million apps and billions of downloads. App developers are trying everything they can think of to bring original ideas for apps into existence. The app concept is generally stage yet. The gold rush for workable app concepts really could be great now at a time when not all the concepts have been discovered yet.

The technology that pushes consumer electronics advances very quickly. And perhaps these days, but there's no single area of consumer technology that sees as much innovation on a regular basis as television technology. Just think about it – from the late 70s to the late 90s, the only thing they did to televisions was to make the screens darker and somewhat flatter. Remote controls and electronic controls became common too, but basically as far as the picture went, somewhat flatter and darker screens were all you got. That's not how it is these days. First came the flatscreen CRT television in the mid-90s, and then plasma, and then LCD, and then superpowerful compact projectors. Now, everyone's wondering about what is an LED TV, exactly.

Well, if LED and LCD didn't sound nearly the same, no one would ever get these two things technologies mixed up. People look at the nearly identical names and think that an LED TV must be a kind of television – the way LCD and plasma are different kinds of television.

I realized a very long time ago that I have a long-standing love affair with all kinds of music, and pretty much need to be around a radio wherever I go. I bought a portable radio for this purpose, and I have to say, I have taken it to many places, some of which you might not expect.

One of the first places that I realized I really needed to bring my portable radio was to work. I cannot stand dead silence in my office, and while most of the time I have probationers coming in and out, there are those times where I am doing administrative work and like to close my door and put on some music. My portable radio allows me to do that and it helps me relax as well.

Another place that I always bring my portable radio is to my cousin's house in Baltimore. He does not have a stereo or any way to play music besides his iPod, so I decided that it would be in my best interest to come prepared. Now, when he is in his room jamming out to his favorite tunes, I can have my music on in my room as well, and neither one of use disturbs the other one.

About five years ago even (which would make it about the time the iPhone first showed up), anyone with car GPS systems (leave alone personal pocket models), could consider themselves pretty with-it – as someone who kept abreast of the latest technology. But smartphones then came along and you didn't even have to buy a GPS unit anymore – if you had a phone, you had a GPS. In fact, magazine articles have been writing obituaries for the standalone GPS unit already – calling them the latest casualty of the iPhone after MP3 players and e-book readers. But in case they haven't noticed, the GPS makers aren't preparing to roll over and die. The way they see it, if smartphones can muscle in on their territory, they could easily find new territory to muscle in on themselves. These days, it isn't just cool for GPS unit to show you the way to somewhere. It's all about multitasking these days.

Zeal Optics is a company with a particularly high-tech vision of what car GPS systems can be like. As far as they are concerned, the future looks like the Terminator. Buy their Transcend GPS units, and you get a pair of ski goggles. In one corner of the right lens, you see a transparent display of everything you need to know. You'll pay $300 for this fun new system.

Any small business needs a good business phone service for its employees. A small business that makes the wrong choice doesn't just have to live with a service that doesn't perform well. It has to live with paying for such a service every month. The options facing any business that tries to contract for a phone service are truly complex; and if you make a mistake, you're locked into it for the life of the two-year contract, and it’s $3000 down the drain.

What exactly do you do if you need to get a mobile business phone service and you want the best phone choices, the best network and the best price? Business customers, like anyone else, will use their phones for three basic purposes – data, voice and texting. Voice and texting are pretty much static technologies. They are what phones were made for in the first place, and the technology and the ability to deliver reliable voice and texting are pretty much fine all over the place. It's in the area of data use that you see the most new technology these days.

It can be hard to really see it when you walk around all day with something that's primarily designed for voice transmission, but nobody uses their phone to call anymore. Nobody, except close family, whom you are used to talking with. If the phone rings for any other reason, it almost seems rude that anyone would call you. It's almost like someone just coming up to your door to visit without even arranging for it ahead of time. When did it begin to feel so alien to call — phone someone just to talk to them?

Young people seem to have given up on trying to call phone numbers completely. Why, to the young, even e-mail is just too fussy – what with the greetings and the signings off and polite written form. The text message hasn't just taken over phone calls. It's taken over all other forms of communication as well. When people do get phone calls, and it's not from their mothers, they usually know by now that they have to just press the “Silent” button so that it'll keep ringing silently and the rude person on the other end who doesn't know any better than to be calling just gets tired of it and hangs up.

The iPhone 5 may be the most anticipated smartphone ever. Everyone who already has an iPhone or another smartphone is already marshaling their resources to upgrade when the happy event of the iPhone 5's release occurs. But existing smartphone owners buying a smartphone again – there is nothing all that exciting about that. How about those who will go about buying a smartphone for the first time now? Well, if you are the owner of a somewhat IQ-challenged phone at this point and you might upgrade to smart one very soon, what should you know? Is it all fun and games are there problems you should anticipate?

The first problem you should anticipate is that your monthly bill is going to hop a couple steps up. And every major provider, you have to buy a monthly plan when you get a smartphone. If you're someone who thinks he can just use Wi-Fi and never use a data plan, that will not work with these providers. Basically, you'll find that your monthly phone bill goes up by $30. And then of course, if you get unlimited texting, that'll be another $10 or so a month.